The smell nearly undid me. Pressing a fist to my mouth, I struggled to tether their reins to the post and fled to our rooms once more. Inside, the others packed the last of their belongings with slow, sluggish movements. Except for Coco and Célie. Smirking, Coco watched from the bed, while Célie flitted to and fro in an effort to help. But she didn’t help. Instead, she talked. Loudly.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” She swatted Jean Luc’s arm before bending to search under the bed for his missing boot. “You know I have always wanted to try whiskey, and you all drank an entire bottle without me! And played truth or dare too! How could you leave me to sleep in the next room while you had all the fun?”

“It wasn’t fun,” Beau muttered, accepting his shirt from Lou. Sometime in the course of the night, it’d ended up in the washbowl. He wrung it out now with a miserable expression. “Fun is the last word I’d use to describe it, actually. Can you stop talking now, darling?”

“Oh, nonsense!” Abandoning her search beneath the bed, Célie rose and planted her hands on her hips. “I want to know every single detail. What questions did you ask? What dares did you undertake? Is that”—her eyes fell to a dark smear on the corner of the dressing table—“is that blood?”

I strode to wipe it away, cheeks hot, mumbling, “Fell doing a cartwheel.”

“Oh my goodness! Are you all right? Actually—never mind. Forget I asked. Clearly, you all had a grand time without me, so a little blood can be your penance. You do have to tell me everything that transpired, however, since you couldn’t be bothered to invite me. Fortunately, we have plenty of time to recount every detail on our way to L’Eau Mélancolique—”

Jean Luc seized her shoulders then, his eyes bloodshot and pleading. “I love you, Célie, but please—shut up.”

“Hear, hear,” Beau said, lifting his shoe.

Though she narrowed her eyes at each of them, it was Coco who interrupted, her voice rising to a shout. “What’s that?” She grinned wider at our collective wince. Each word was a spike through my eyes. “You can’t hear us? Célie, darling, we must speak up for them.”

Célie grinned now too. “Of course, Cosette. How abominably rude of us! Shall I repeat everything I’ve just said?”

“I think that would be the courteous thing to do.”

“You’re right. It would be. What I said was—”